Police officer’s suicide exposes Victoria Police culture claims
Victoria Police sergeant Shona O'Connor died in November 2019. Court and coronial documents now describe bullying, sexual harassment and corruption in parts of the force, and her family wants the coronial investigation reopened and has appealed to Police Commissioner Mike Bush.
Victoria Police sergeant Shona O'Connor, 43, died by suicide in November 2019, and her family is now asking for the coronial investigation into her death to be reopened. Court transcripts, coronial documents and internal police records describe a hidden culture of bullying, sexual harassment, theft and corruption inside parts of the force.
This article contains a description of suicide.
A deliberate act
O'Connor was a mother of three who had wanted to join the police since preschool. On a November morning she put on her uniform and drove an hour north to the town of Malmsbury. She called triple zero from a toilet block in the botanic gardens and told the operator: "I'm really sorry, I'm a police officer, my name is Shona O'Connor."
Detective Jacob Laidlaw investigated her death for Professional Standards, the force's integrity division. He believes her choice of uniform was what he calls a "statement suicide". "[It] is a statement to Victoria Police that, 'I'm doing this because of you,'" Laidlaw says.
Concerns about Melton station
Management at Victoria Police had worried about the culture at Melton police station for years before O'Connor died. "It was very unsafe [at Melton], particularly for policewomen," Laidlaw says.
Kylie Hinson, a former sergeant who worked with O'Connor at Melton in the early 2000s, describes a sexist, heavy-drinking station where drinking on the job was expected. "[It was] absolutely horrible," she says. She says new female officers were nicknamed "pee wees" and that male officers competed to sleep with them.
Hinson also describes parties known as "mongrels" that involved strippers. Another former female officer who later worked at Melton corroborated that account.
Almost three years before O'Connor died, Victoria Police sent staff a questionnaire to "investigate allegations of predatory behaviour" at the station. The force said the questionnaire "identified a concerning degree of inappropriate and derogatory behaviour from members at the Melton Police Station".
What the family says
O'Connor told her family she had experienced this behaviour herself. "She did make reference of the fact that it was hard to be a female in the police force, that it was very much a boys' club," her sister Reschelle remembers.
O'Connor also told her father, Michael, and her then-boyfriend Nathan Parker, a senior sergeant who had worked at Melton, that her senior sergeant had made sexually harassing comments about her on two occasions. The first came at a sergeants' training session in 2017.
Her family has appealed directly to Police Commissioner Mike Bush. "Mike, sir, you need to fix this," Michael O'Connor says, fighting back tears. "Our daughter's dead sir, and she's never coming back."
